Articulating your vision exposes you to failure: do it anyway

So you’ve taken your time, built up a big picture, and now you have a vision you’re ready to share throughout your organization (inform and infuse).

Butterflies in the stomach? Palms sweaty? Yeah, me too.

This is your job, and you’ve got to do it or your organization will never grow or change, which means it will eventually die. But there is risk here, and it comes with what I imagine is a pretty universal fear: fear of public failure.

Your team cannot be empowered to make great decisions quickly if they don’t understand the organizations goals. So you know you’ve got to share your vision. Everyone must know about your big picture so that everyone can come together to make it a reality. But that’s a lot of visibility. What if you fail?

Freedom to fail applies to you, too

Earlier we talked about the freedom to fail, and creating an environment for your team wherein failure has value and is allowed. This applies to you, too.

Brace yourself: your vision, as originally conceived, might be off base.

Perhaps it’s not possible with current technology, or perhaps a little way down the road you realize that this particular road isn’t going where you thought it was.

Avoiding the vision death march

Adjust. Adapt. Don’t hide from the problems, continuing blindly on what will become a “vision death march” just because you don’t want to make a big, public mistake.

The only way to really fail here is not learning from your bad choice and taking corrective action.

Once in motion, stay in motion

By trying to achieve your vision, you will have put your organization in motion. You know from your physics classes that the coefficient of moving friction is often less than the coefficient of static friction—in other words, once you get something moving, its easier to keep it moving.

Refine your vision (remembering to tweak without radical shifts), let everyone know about the adjustment, and keep moving.